Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Friday May 30, 2008 @04:18PM
from the strike-while-the-iron-is-hot dept.

Erik J writes "Remember about six weeks ago when Motley Crue and Rock Band partnered to release a new single premiering first in the game before anywhere else? Come to find out their song 'Saints of Los Angeles' was downloaded over 47,000 times on the Xbox version alone, beating out digital services iTunes and Amazon, which were tapped only 10,000 times for the single."

Look, I loved Crue back in the 80's (who didn't?), but their albums and singles these days aren't exactly shattering sales records. I imagine that just about *ANY* new song added to Rock Band would sell better than any given new Crue single on iTunes, just because of the completists and those looking for ANY new content.

I mean, 47,000 downloads is great and all, but there was a time when a new Crue album would sell in the MILLIONS.

Me for one. Although I was always more into music like Pixies and punk and less mainstream. But yeah I agree with what you're sayin'. S'funny now the Crue is more a niche act now. the music I dug in the 80's, in turn, seems to get more exposure.

Does that mean in 20 years hair bands will rule again? I'm sure the ozone is cringing.

WHen I was a teen late 70's, early 80s, we would talk about what music would be like i 20-30 years. We had a lot od thoughts but no one expected it to be the exact same music.I laugh whenever I see a 30 year old punk rock shirt on some teen. I mean, really can't this generation create there own rebel music?

That was my era too, and I used to feel the same way. But after I watched "End of the Century" (the Ramones thing that's been on cable lately), the late (GREAT) Joey Ramone was remarking about how their fan base spans several generations, etc. It got me to thinking how arrogant that kind of attitude is. Some of that early punk was just plain great (if not terrible at the same time). We can't claim it. We were just lucky to have had it when we were growing up. Really lucky.
Would a hippie from the '60s laugh if I were wearing a Beatles t-shirt. Hell no. Same idea.

Funny you should mention that. My oldest nephew recently raided my old closet at my moms house when she asked him to get rid of my "junk". Now all the girls are fawning over him and telling him how wicked cool he looks in all those "vintage retro" band shirts like Poison,Crue,DLR,etc. Not to mention he snatched my Judas priest satin jacket and all my old 80's shirts with zippers and wild prints like zebra stripes. Now when i go to pick him up and hear the girls fawning over his cool "retro" look i want to scream "That's NOT retro! he just stole all my clothes!!!" Never thought I'd see the day that the bands I jammed out to would be considered classic rock. Damned I'm getting to old for this sh*t. And get off my lawn!

I'm 24, and maybe it's just me, but 2007 was a horrible year for music. So, because of that, and also due to me making some older friends since graduating from college, I've been getting into some of the older bands (Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Boston, Journey, Billy Idol, and of course, the Crue).

I'm 23 and I concur; I never thought I'd ever say the following words other than to make fun of the boomers, but, have you heard Def Leppard's new CD? It seriously rocks. Boston is great, but I've been listening to them since high school, so it's not much of a change for me. However, I have been digging into the 80's stuff between the occasional gem that I come across (mostly bands I've never listened to before and decided to give a spin). I was just thinking the other day about a conversation I had yea

2007 was one of the best years I can remember in a long, long time, for music. You just weren't listening to the right places.

As for the really big name acts:

Nine inch Nails - Year Zero(okay, was mostly a really striking departure from what we expect from music, but isn't that the point?)
Processor - My Industry (not technically big name, but should be -- released at the same time as year zero, so it was easily eclipsed, but it is well worth the download)
Radiohead - In Rainbows

2007 was a fantastic year for metal: Dark Tranquillity, Porcupine Tree, Epica, Symphony X, Devildriver, High On Fire...both doom and goth metal got completely rewritten, depressive black went completely new fucked up places, thrash metal came back into true form, and the seeds were lain for a second flowering of melodeath. Awesome year.

Because your generation were all so sold on rock and roll anything equaling cool that when they all got jobs in advertising and other such bullshit, they put rock and roll on a chopping block and made it just another brand.

Or maybe any artform has a natural lifespan, and Rock and Rolls was semi-miraculously extended a few more times than likely as it is. Even jazz stopped innovating at some point.

And just maybe radio and the record industry aren't what they were once, so you're not going to hear edgy bands without looking for them.

Maybe there is rebel music. It's called hip hop, and a lot of emerging scenes in the 3rd world. Maybe there's still good rock and roll out there because kids are going to play the music they love whether or not they're showing up late to the party. Maybe garages and basements are alive and well and you wouldn't know because you haven't participated in any culture that doesn't require buying a ticket or subscription in two decades.

And who says rebellious = new. The bits of 70s and 80s punk that weren't safe enough to be marketable are still *totally* fair game for lashing out when you're 17. The best music of the past 30 years has all come out of that stuff, why stop?

Anyway, rock's older. It's got more cruft. That's just the way things go. Look at the movies. But the kids are all right. And all this spineless pitchfork crap will pass.

I don't know, I think today's best rock music reflects our culture pretty well. Radiohead, DJ Dangermouse, and Trent Reznor have been a much greater threat to the recording industry than the Sex Pistols or independent punk labels ever were. The way popular music is created, distributed, and experienced is dramatically changing. Artists have the opportunity to play a major role in the transformation. Angst and rebellion are not necessarily the same thing.

You ARE aware that you just pissed off everyone in France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Spain... and let me not start about the eastern half of Europe which has some really funny specks and dots above, below and inside letters as well.Just because the English alphabet only offers you 26 letters to choose from doesn't mean that's how it should be. Though I have to admit, coding with a keyboard filled with those additional letters is rather hard (ever tried writing a C program and having to use ctrl-alt-

You ARE aware that you just pissed off everyone in France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Spain... and let me not start about the eastern half of Europe which has some really funny specks and dots above, below and inside letters as well.

GWB pissed all of these countries off already by going into Iraq. What's a little more anger from the old AXIS of evil really going to do anyways?:-)

Geeks (at least the ones I know) can discriminate between a country and its leadership. I hate GWB. With a passion. I think the biggest threat to stability, in the world in general and in the middle east in particular, isn't Ozzy or Mahmud, but him and his politics. He brought so much pain and sorrow into the world, not only abroad but also in his own country, that I am about to believe in God again, just to find comfort in the thought that he may be accountable for his crimes in some sort of afterlife.I do

I write Java rather than C, but needing Alt-Gr on my Spanish keyboard to get [ and { does annoy me. Also when I first starting using it I puzzled for ages as to how to get backtick (`) for use in shell scripts.

You ARE aware that you just pissed off everyone in France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Spain... and let me not start about the eastern half of Europe which has some really funny specks and dots above, below and inside letters as well.

So, as the poster was saying, only the crazies use chars not in the first 127 of ASCII.

Apparently anyone who really loved them also would not care to buy their new music...:)

Indeed, the past tense of "loved" was appropriate.

I loved them to death. I remember when Motley Crüe and Def Leppard were my two absolutely favorite by far bands ever. I had every cassette tape of theirs I could get my little hands on. And I bought them all over again when I got a CD player.

And there they sit, in my CD rack. I took my favorite one out and actually encoded it into MP3 so I could actually listen to it again. After that, I didn't bother encoding the rest. My tastes, apparently,

It's the infamous Heavy Metal Umlaut [wikipedia.org]. As you can see, they ain't the only ones to use that kind of style.

Also makes it really funny when you talk about such a band in a German speaking country. You get corrected almost immediately... to the wrong pronunciation. Or the right one, depends on how you look at it. At any rate, it makes those bandnames sound very silly when pronounced "correctly".

Actually, Motley Crue is an interesting case study in the effects of drugs on music. Their two best albums, Girls, Girls, Girls and Dr. Feelgood, were made at the height of their drug abuse and after they went clean, respectively. Both albums are nearly-equally respected, with Dr. Feelgood getting perhaps slightly better reviews.

Completely pointless comparisons. So what if it was only downloaded 10k times on itunes + amazon. There is still the meatspace market to consider, and the single hasn't released there yet. Some people still like material goods.

Whether "some people still like material goods" is irrelevant when comparing two digital distribution methods.

What's interesting is how much more the songs sold on Rock Band compared to iTunes and Amazon. This will, of course, be due to many factors, not the least being that Motley Crue has many songs that are suitable for "air guitar". This doesn't imply that other songs will have the same sales pattern, but might be worth noting for artists who produce music that is suited for Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

The big difference is that when you go on iTunes to buy a song, you have millions of songs to choose from. When you go on Rock Band, you don't get a million songs to choose from. Doing this kind of comparison would be like saying that SMB 3 on Virtual Console outsold used cartridges in game stores. It's a completely different product for a completely different market.

The funny thing about online music downloads (and the MAFIAA) is that I'm more than willing to pay for all of my media just as I pay for all of my games, (which I can also usually download just as easily for free). The reason I pay for games is because the publishers add value like game servers, ranking and records, updates, and free stuff like wallpaper and screensavers.

I want to buy music, I want to buy video content, I WANT to support my favorite artists. But right now there is no added value for me if I pay, and currently I actually lose value by paying because the only time I am restricted in my paid media's usage is when I hit a DRM wall.

No one in the music and movie industries seems to want my money badly enough to actually work for it. And after the last several years of arrogance, lawsuits and being referred to as a "Revenue Stream" rather than as a "Customer", work is what it will take from the music and video industry for me to actually pay for music and video content.

"Eleven Seven Music was developed in association with ADA, a Warner Music Group company." says wikipedia [wikipedia.org]...Warner, of course being one of the Big-Four. Worse, whenever I check and find that a label (seems) to have no riaa affiliation, and I actually wander down to my local (independent) CD store, I discover that it was still distributed by one of the Big Four.

I hate like hell to give them even a nickle, so that put some severe limits on what you can buy.

Its comments like these that make me enjoy slashdot. I frequently find myself saying 'yeah i agree with what you said even if I didn't think it myself'. I wish the RIAA/MPAA et al would read slashdot. If only we could get some good ideas into the right minds of those organisations...

What exactly are the record companies supposed to do for you to add "value" (and isn't the music the value in itself)? The can put a bonus DVD in there, which immediately gets ripped and is available for free. They can have some extra songs you can download with a code from the CD, which are immediately put up for free. They can let you stream some extra stuff from their site, which will either be ripped and offered for free or people will complain because they can only stream it from the website. They

The reason I pay for games is because the publishers add value like game servers, ranking and records, updates, and free stuff like wallpaper and screensavers.

What about little things like ethics, morals, and personal integrity? What about paying for it because they created the game and are trying to make a living selling it? I used to download software, but have since stopped because it bothered my conscience. Heck, I even bought a legal copy of WinXP.

It's all well and good to hate the music industry megacorps, but that doesn't give you the right to blithely violate their copyright.

What about little things like ethics, morals, and personal integrity? What about paying for it because they created the game and are trying to make a living selling it? I used to download software, but have since stopped because it bothered my conscience. Heck, I even bought a legal copy of WinXP.

It's all well and good to hate the music industry megacorps, but that doesn't give you the right to blithely violate their copyright.

Are you asking about MY ethics, morals, and personal integrity or the *IAA's? I already said that I DO in fact pay for games, and my OS is open source, I own several copies of various flavors of Widows given to me over the years at tech events, so they're legal too. What exactly is your point?

> What about paying for it because they created the game and are trying to make a living selling it?

And what about only paying for it if it's any good instead?

In the UK we have a thing called "fit for purpose": if you buy a physical product and it's not "fit for purpose", you can just take it back for a full refund. It's even enough that the item didn't "fit the purpose" that you expected of it (within reason), regardless of anything that it might say on the outer box.

Come to find out their song 'Saints of Los Angeles' was downloaded over 47,000 times on the Xbox version alone, beating out digital services iTunes and Amazon who only were only tapped 10,000 times for the single.

Maybe it's just me, but this doesn't seem all that surprising. I mean, iTunes has millions(?) of songs. People aren't going to download Motley Crew unless they like them/know about them/whatever. Rock Band has maybe a hundred (don't know, I haven't been on the store), and people want more songs to keep the game fresh, so they are going to buy it.

It seems pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, it seems like people (the author of the article, for example) are going to remark on how video game songs are the wave of the future...etc, etc.

I agree with your point: video games is not the future of music distribution. I'm convinced it's not the future source of popular songs, either. However, it will remain a source of high-quality music; take for instance warcraft 3, or the ripoff-ees of Press Play on Tape. Or, going open source, listen to some music from Wesnoth, Nexuiz, Vegastrike or Sauerbraten.

Sheesh. They could all go out and buy Desert Eagles too. I mean, why would you want to play a FPS when you can actually go out and shoot a real gun with real bullets at real people? Rock Band is just good clean fun. No one actually thinks that they're a guitar god. So drop the elitist attitude.
+ Anonymous Coward isn't invited next time I have a Rock Band night. Take that!

People keep saying this, and it has yet to be valid. I've played real guitar. I've played Guitar Hero/Rock Band. They are both enjoyable pursuits, and who enjoys one will not necessarily enjoy the other. This nonsense of insisting that people playing GH/Rock Band should "get real instruments" is so nonsensical... how the hell are you to know if they just don't enjoy playing a real instrument, but enjoy playing the game?

I've noticed lately that people seem to want to compare GH / RB to Simon. How is this comparison even valid? About the only similarity they have is that they have colored buttons and 'lights'.Simon requires no timing, you simply memorize a (random) sequence and simply have a time limit with which to repeat that sequence back to the game.

In rhythm games, you see, anticipate, and manipulate the corresponding device in time with music. There is physically challenging coordination required on higher difficul

This is good, it means another potential revenue source for musicians, since the era of selling truckloads of plastic discs with songs encoded on them for 15 bucks is coming to an end. The ability to "rock out" along side of a song is the sort of added value that musicians and even the record companies should be offering people to keep us buying their product.

But selling tracks online isn't the only way they could do this. Why not sell your CD in stores, and include with the disc a code that lets you download all the songs into Rock Band/GH? That would go a lot further towards convincing me to shell out 20 bucks for it.

Because there's lots of people who won't spend $20 for the music, when all they really want is maybe one or two songs that they could just download.I'm a perfect example of that (Woohoo, anecdotal evidence!). The Cars just had an entire album released for RockBand. I'd say I like The Cars, there's a few songs on that album that are immediately recognizable to me. The rest of them, not so much. But bought the whole album on RockBand because I really enjoy Rock Band and I like having more songs for it. I paid

Motley crue is terrible. I think I heard that song on Sirius, and it's just laughable crap. That kind of music wasn't even that good in the 80's, not it just sounds like someone's goofing on them by writing a "world's most crapulific song" parody of what a Motley crue song might sound like now.

So nobody wants to listen to the music. But people who play to a game like that don't care if the music is horribly terrible, so they downloaded it.

As someone who plays a lot of rhythm-based games (but not Guitar Hero, funnily enough, though I plan on buying it at SOME point... programming student here, too busy to have job) I can't begin to describe how boring most of the songs get after a while. DDR suffers from this problem -- that's why I play Stepmania, which is open source (incl. the song format).
Put it this way: The Guitar Hero fans eager for a new fix outnumber the fans of an ageing pop-rock band that, like everyone else, was eventually spat

This could be an example of disconnected markets. I haven't given this much thought but on the surface that's the appearance I get. If that's the case, it's an opportunity for some people to make a little money and link them up, properly.

MrHanky is a fairly old-fashioned troll. While not being something you'd read on its own, it's very suitable for a Slashdot post. Consider "Motley Crue Single Does Better on Rock Band," filled with extremely gay comments. Very few people with any self respect will read that kind of crap, but within the context of the thread, it fits perfectly. "Why not?", an RSS reader, and mod points...perfect. Actually reading it? Not so.

It wasn't intended as a troll, only as an explanation for how a game can expand the market for a piece of music. Naturally, I also wanted to present the perspective of a potential consumer of such music as well: one who doesn't like the music per se, but love it within the context of the game. It lends character to the persona you act out. Just like I'd never steal a car, I'd never listen to A Flock of Seagulls. But within the game, I do love doing both.That said, having six "+1, interesting" mods and still